Nothing, and Maybe Worse: A President’s Nonsensical Gun Proposals

As far as I can tell, here is the totality of what President Obama proposed Wednesday to do about “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines. (Actually, regarding those guns and magazines, he didn’t really propose to do anything; what he proposed for was Congress to do something — the same thing it did in 1994). In any event, here is the beginning, middle, and end of what he proposed:

Congress should restore a ban on military-style assault weapons, and a 10-round limit for magazines. (Applause.) The type of assault rifle used in Aurora, for example, when paired with high-capacity magazines, has one purpose — to pump out as many bullets as possible, as quickly as possible; to do as much damage, using bullets often designed to inflict maximum damage.

And that’s what allowed the gunman in Aurora to shoot 70 people — 70 people — killing 12 in a matter of minutes. Weapons designed for the theater of war have no place in a movie theater.

Here’s my recommendation: Congress should take the president literally, and do exactly what he says: nothing.

“Weapons designed for the theater of war” have the capability of firing automatically. Such weapons have been prohibited (except to collectors, who pay a very high license fee) since 1934. They are not available to the general public.

They have been used in no mass shootings, and no crime at all, for over 60 years.

Banning them again would ban no weapon currently in production or readily available anywhere. What weapons would the president’s “proposal” ban? Who knows? He certainly doesn’t. The 1994 law dealt with the fact that there really is no such thing as an “assault weapon” by naming a few specific weapons and by listing some required identifying features. For example: a pistol grip or a detachable magazine could qualify a gun as an “assault weapon.” But what would President Obama have Congress do about this rifle?

Note that this Mossberg MVP Varmint Rifle has a very distinctive pistol grip, and it also has a detachable box magazine. Many hunting rifles do, but this one is distinctive: it uses any magazines that will fit AR-15 rifles. It comes with a 10-rounder (of the same caliber, 5.56 NATO/ .223 Remington) that most AR-15s and other scary-looking “military style” weapons fire. Thus, it will accept the 20- and 30-rounders that Obama would like to prohibit.

Yet — since it is a bolt action and not a semi-automatic, this weapon would not be illegal under the terms of the 1994 law, even though it can be fired rapidly enough (as can pump action shotguns, also not banned in 1994) to do extensive damage quite quickly.

Would Obama have it be outlawed? Certainly, he doesn’t know.

The “one purpose” of the weapons used in Aurora (the movie theater in Colorado) and Sandy Hook, according to the president, is “to pump out as many bullets as possible, as quickly as possible.” This description does not distinguish those weapons from the millions of other semi-automatics (and high-capacity magazines) currently in the hands of law-abiding Americans.

The Washington Postreports that when the 1994 ban went into effect, “there were roughly 1.5 million assault weapons and more than 24 million high-capacity magazines in private hands” (and that was just “assault weapons” according to the limited definition of the 1994 ban — not all semi-automatics). There are many more now, and none of those weapons or magazines already produced were affected by the ban. Nor are the bullets those “assault weapons” fire — the .223 Remington — different in any way from those widely in use in all those other semi-automatic rifles.

The president’s reference to “bullets often designed to inflict maximum damage” presumably refers to hollow-points, bullets designed to expand on impact. But is the president seriously proposing to ban all hollow-point ammunition? If so, it is not accurate to say that his attempt to restrict “military style” weapons and limit the capacity of magazines would have no effect whatsoever on the likelihood or lethality of mass shootings. Indeed, banning hollow-points would almost certainly make future shootings — at least future shootings conducted with federally approved ammunition — much more lethal.

In fact, limiting magazine size can also be predicted to cause more rather than fewer fatalities. As I argued here:

Indeed, a perfectly predictable but unintended consequence of banning high-capacity magazines would be to decrease the appeal of 9mm handguns and increase the popularity of more the powerful and lethal .40 and .45 caliber and .357 Magnum, since the main appeal of the 9mm has always been its higher-capacity magazines.

As with many “reforms,” the president’s proposals are sure to be ineffectual if implemented, and in some cases are far worse than doing nothing.

Here is a real ‘gun nut’. In a fit of pontifical frenzy, and in defiance of logic and common sense, Piers Morgan seems to have completely lost whatever mind he previously allegedly had. In the second video in this link, he argues to Dana Loesch that you should not shoot at a gang of thugs coming to get you unless they kill you. Seriously, listen carefully:

Seriously, there are just SO damn many firearms out there that banning any or all of them is pointless. You can do a very nice job of killing people with a replica Colt Navy revolver – a black powder pistol which, last time I looked, is not regulated at all. The original worked pretty well for people like Wild Bill Hickock. Evidently, what was deadly to our great-great grandfathers is just a toy these days.

No, Obama and his pals have selective vision. They don’t know anything about the big picture, which is absolutely packed with people holding guns.

Speaking of girls and 9mms, both are likely to be negatively affected by any new gun control laws. Take my home state of NY, which recently passed these most nonsensical gun control laws in recent history.

Among other things, the new law bans any magazine with a capacity of more than 7 rounds. The vast majority of handguns today are made to accept magazines holding upwards of 20 rounds (I’m sick of people calling these “high capacity”; they’re standard capacity – what the gun was designed to shoot).

I happened to be doing some gun shopping the day the bill was rammed through, so I took a look around at its potential effects. Big, single stack .45s will be relatively unaffected. Many of these guns only hold 7 rounds of powerful ammunition. Likely, many so-called mouse guns – tiny pistols meant to be stashed in a pocket or purse – are also designed to hold 6 or 7 round magazines. However, the firearms in the middle – what most people buy for self defense or sporting purposes – are essentially outlawed as 7 round magazines aren’t even manufactured for them.

Who does this affect? Most gun owners in one way or another, but most of all, those with small frames who can’t handle a lot of recoil. I can handle the size and recoil of a large .45, but I’m a big guy. It’s more than my wife is comfortable with. The mouse guns are even worse. The big guns absorb some of the recoil, but the small ones send it all to your hand. They can be downright painful, in addition to being inaccurate and less reliable than mid-sized pistols. The only way to minimize the kick is to go down to a caliber so small that it’s ineffective.

And how does this all affect criminals? I’ve spent years studying gun control and gun violence. To the best that I can determine, the majority of criminals use whatever weapons are convenient or available. Whether it’s a Glock with 17 rounds in the mag or a 5-round revolver, They can probably make it work. Heck, if the intended victim is a petite female, most criminals could overpower her with their bare hands and finish her off with a hammer or screwdriver. In this situation, the gun laws only affected the victim, who couldn’t buy the mid-sized 9mm that was her ideal self-defense tool.

I’d very much like to see 2,000,000 American citizens march on Washington, D.C. this spring to let our wannabe lords and masters know they’re actually our public servants, and we have three expectations of them:

• They’d better leave the Second Amendment and the rest of our rights alone—or we’ll fire them all!

Still Waters, I’d very much like to see 2M citizens march on DC WITH their firearms; I’m not sure anything less will do.

On another tack, “weapons designed for the battlefield, in the hands of “strict constructionist” dems (the only time that would be a characteristic of them), could cover a VERY wide range of weapons, to include my Navy Colt 1851 black powder revolver.

Choose Your Own Crime Stats
An interesting look at Crime Stats in the United States using data from the FBI that doesn’t seem to be getting much discussion from either the press or politicians. There has been a 50% reduction in the violent crime rate in the last twenty years and neither political party is taking credit for this? I thought politicians always wanted to take credit for good things? Perhaps they don’t want to draw attention to the fact that higher crime rates seem to correspond with inner cities? The great thing about living in the United States is you’re Free To Choose, at least for now, so feel free to Choose Your Own Crime Stats if you don’t like these.

An interesting look at Crime Stats in the United States using data from the FBI that doesn’t seem to be getting much discussion from either the press or politicians. There has been a 50% reduction in the violent crime rate in the last twenty years and neither political party is taking credit for this? I thought politicians always wanted to take credit for good things? Perhaps they don’t want to draw attention to the fact that higher crime rates seem to correspond with inner cities? The great thing about living in the United States is you’re Free To Choose, at least for now, so feel free to Choose Your Own Crime Stats if you don’t like these.

Any right that is a true human right is inherent. Such rights are not granted by government, they are not privileges bestowed by society, or created by documents, therefore such rights cannot be regulated, limited or revoked by any such power. Any supposed authority which seeks to strip a Natural Right from the People is illegitimate, and should be dealt with accordingly.

They have been used in no mass shootings, and no crime at all, for over 60 years.

I beg to disagree. Here in L.A. gangbangers have access to, and use in their social disagreements with their peers, AK-47s. They are, of course, illegal, but that doesn’t seem to concern the Crips, Bloods, MS-13s et-al. The bloody fact of the matter is that all gun laws affect only the law-abiding. People who are willing to shoot their neighbors over the color of their shoes don’t get their guns at Wal-Mart.

Then there’s the question of “assault rifles”. The previous law, as you noted, defined the beast by appearance – pistol grips, flash suppressors, etc. – but just because the supermarket security guard wears black tactical gear doesn’t make him a SWAT cop, and wannabe stuff doesn’t make a sporting gun an assault rifle.

Gosh, if congress bans military style assault rifles what will the military use? They are the only ones with military style assault rifles. If you want to call select fire rifles with bayonet lugs, detachable hi-cap mags, collapsible stocks and pistol grip rifles ‘military style assault rifles.’

Frickin’ idiots. I could drop a 10 shot mag from rifle and slam in a new one in about 3 seconds, and I am neither practiced nor proficient with that type of weapon. The cops took TWENTY MINUTES at Sandy Hook till the first officer arrived on scene.

This argument and debate from the left’s perspective has not one damn thing to do with preventing mass murders and everything to do with taking a baby step to gun laws like Australia and Great Britain have, which amount to bans on firearms in the hands of ordinary citizens. Not only are they wrong on the Constitution they are damn liars when they say they don’t want to take away your guns.

Even if the police just took 3 minutes, there is plenty of time to reload when a reload take a couple of seconds. Even in old cowboy movies, the cowboys could reload their revolvers in 5 or 10 seconds. I have big magazines simply because I would rather stop reload once or twice while target shooting than a dozen times.

Obama and his gang of thugs know exactly what they are doing. Only the useful idiots believe that they are truly interested in saving lives. He knows that the second amendment is not about to be overturned by legal means. He and his anti-American cabal are try to provoke us into an unwise action which would result in the need for “sweeping emergency actions” by our government.

My Remington 700 chambered in NATO 7.62 NATO/308 Winchester is derived from the Mauser 98K/1903 Springfield bolt action rifles. SGT Alvin York used an ’03 Springfield to great effect when he killed 28 German soldiers in a very short period of time. The 1903 Springfield/Mauser 98 K fire a far more powerful round than an AR-15 with it’s varmint round. Gen McCrystal said that 223 is “too powereful” for civilian use. Bull, the M-16/M-4 is insufficient for a miitary firearm. Ever since Vietnam American infantrymen have gone to war outgunned by their enemies. Why do you think they dragged out old M-14s in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The adoption of the 5.56mm round came out of the decision that suppressive fire was more important than long range accuracy and killing power. A standard load of .30-06 for the M1 Garand was 80 rounds, today soldiers carry 180 or more of the lighter .22 caliber cartridge for the M-4/M-16.
In point of fact, the 5.56mm, aka .223 Remington in civilian garb, is banned for deer hunting in most states simply because it is not powerful enough to ensure a clean humane kill on that size of game animal.

As I have explained before the M-16 was not adopted because it was a better weapon. It was what was available to fill a perceived need. In the late ’50s the Air Force bought the AR-15 to replace the M-2 carbine and the M-2 “grease gun” for the security police. When the Army decided that “spray and pray” was the way to go it was already on contract. After the Army looked at the data from Vietnam they realized that semiautomatic fire and good tactics is more effective than filling the air with lead. That is why full automatic fire is seldom used anymore. Unfortunately, the military is stuck with an inferior weapon.

Weapons effective is more than just killing power. More people are killed by the lowly 22lr than any other round. The problem with using a light weight, low power round like 223 is that it is easily deflected by foliage and has poor penetration. A 308 or 30-06 turns a lot cover into mere concealment. At 100 yards a car door will stop a 223 while a 308 will go in one door, out the other and kill you. A WWII rifleman may have only carried 80 round but that is more trigger pulls than the 180 rounds carried by today’s soldier if any sort of select fire is used. What we found out fighting in a modern city like Fallujah is that it doesn’t matter how rounds you fire if they don’t penetrate and hit the target. That’s why the Army went back and pulled out M-14s.

@ lar: It was 210 or more rounds for us, actually. Also I disagree that the deer thing is about “size” of the animal. Deer hides are very protective and deer’s bodies are arranged in ways that offer more protection against things like bullets, than humans or our nearest ballistic analogs: pigs. Wild hogs larger than humans and as large as what you’d find on certain deer hunts are regularly harvested cleanly with 5.56mm rounds, and there’s plenty of such results posted on the internet. Generally the best rounds for this are very heavy (68 gr. or more) BTHP rounds, which unfortunately our troops are not allowed to carry due to their hollow points and foolish stupid international restrictions. Within 200 meters the difference is probably miniscule, but it would be nice if instead of wasting money on developing 6.5 or 6.8mm rounds we just reinterpreted the international agreements and issued our soldiers quality loads and reserved the stuff they already have for training, then they’d see reliable expansion out to longer ranges.

@ td: The M-14 was ‘pulled out’ not to replace M4s due to stopping power, nor has the Army ‘gone back’ to anything. It is used like it never was before, with a scope not really well suited to much of the fighting we do, in a specialized squadmember role: counter-sniper and sharpshooter duties. That’s all well and good for those occasional 300m engagements, but we saw little of that, and it’s essentially like taking a sniper along with your squad without necessarily having the scout-snipers’ style of training — the M4 is still far superior for house to house fighting and most urban engagements (and arguably non-urban short and medium range ones, for speed and the suppressive fire mentioned). Lastly, there is just no way any infantryman would be out of ammo in the minimum 70 trigger pulls or anything close to the number of trigger pulls an 80 rnd or even 120 rnd load of 7.62 would get you. Things have changed a lot since spray and pray – we train to engage targets in single shot, train to suppress in single shot, we train to clear rooms with single shot controlled pairs. The only time I would have considered abandoning that selection would be trying to empty a mag ASAP by painting a whole mud hut wall with bullets, if I had a good idea who was and was not behind the wall. Obviously that implies a very non-ideal situation. In sum I don’t feel we’re under-gunned at all. We could do slightly better with ammo selection, but we generally dominate our enemies and their AKs/FALs/RPKs/RPGs/etc wherever we can find them and go toe to toe (so the future of warfare is finding them — give me a drone telling me he can see them, and where, over a better or bigger rifle anyday). Don’t get me wrong, I like the 7.62 and my first semi auto rifle as a civilian will probably be one, but in the situations we were in I feel that M4s are absolutely great for my fellow soldiers, and their varying backgrounds, body sizes, and skill levels, to uniformly back me up with what I need with good speed.

Also when lefties call the AR-15 a killing machine, remind them that people like me defend the caliber because it INCAPACITATES well, not kills outright every time, which was the original defense for taking a much smaller round. It was designed for defense, not mass murder, and that’s generally what perhaps a million cops (with 30 rnd mags) around the country have it for.

Once the Army abandoned automatic fire the 5.56 loses its utility. I understand that you like the M-4 because you used it in combat. In the way WWII GIs loved their M-1s and scarfed them up for hunting once they went on sale to the public. If you want a carbine the Springfield SOCOM 16 variant of the M-1A is a much better weapon. A soldier can still carry 120+ rounds of 308.

The .223 carbines are useful for close range combat. There are reports that in Iraq and Afghanistan, the enemy has learned the safe distance to be from a .223 M4 or M16 and stays outside that range. The old .308s were brought out because of their longer range.

Obama wants a ban on expanding bullets? Gee, he must have read the Hague Accords. Never mind that the main reason expanding bullets are recommended for non-military use is to reduce the chances of over-penetration, which poses a danger to bystanders, especially in police shooting incidents.

Then again, he probably thinks that if we are no longer armed with “assault weapons” loaded with “evil” expanding-bullet ammunition, the police will never have to shoot anybody, ever again.

I had hoped that the limped wristed set of window dressing EOs would finally put to rest this BS on what Obama could or could not do. National registration of firearms is explicity prohibited by current federal law (Firearm Owner’s Protection Act) The President can only issue an EO if the authority comes from a specific statute. He cannot issue an EO to override a statute. If he could do that he would have used his executive powers to ban semiautomatic rifles and normal capacity magazines. Under curent law only Congress can do that and he knows that a renewed AWB isn’t going anywhere.

that Obama’s proposed 10-round limit on gun magazine capacity is another wonderful example of grand-standing politicians being mugged by technological advances and normal American entrepreneurs. Obama’s proposed new regulations and laws here are already obsolete due to the availability of $500 3D home printers, which can produce really cheap plastic firearms magazines of any desired capacity in people’s homes.

There will be a need for insertable metal spring mechanisms which normal American entrepreneurs will certainly offer at minimal cost. At that point the chief expense of firearms magazines will be the labor cost in inserting the spring mechanisms, and people making them for their own use won’t charge for their own labor.

Anything people can build in their own homes simply cannot be regulated effectively. They’ll trade them at shows, vary their colors and use them as decorations (1st Amendment art protection), and use them in lots of ways that have nothing to do with firearms. Because they’ll be _cheap_, i.e., little more than the cost of the materials.

I made one of these this week in my 3D printer, I’d say it uses somewhere around $5 worth of plastic. It fits into and locks with the mechanism in the firearm just as well as the original, but I haven’t gotten a chance to fire it yet.
Check out:http://defcad.org/

They have the 3D .STL files needed to produce magazines and some firearm parts available for free download.

The article makes a valid point about the actual effects of a limit on magazine capacity.

The benefit of lower power rounds like the 9mm or .223 is that they’re smaller and lighter, you can fit more of them in a magazine designed for a firearm of a given size. Limiting magazines to 10 rounds does 2 things:

1. Encourages people to use guns chambered for more powerful rounds
2. Encourages guns to be made smaller

AFAIK the “subcompact” weapons designed for concealment didn’t exist until the clinton ban. Sure derringers have been around forever, but I’m talking about the very small 9mm semi-autos that use a 10 round clip and are designed to be only just big enough to accommodate this. Nobody wants to carry a gun with a bunch of empty space inside that could be used to carry more ammo, so they either increase the power and size of each round, or minimize the size of the gun to eliminate that dead space. This isn’t exactly rocket science, but given their poor understanding of human nature and what their mandates actually encourage in the real world (e.g. all the Obamacare provisions encouraging businesses to drop health insurance, or fire employees, or cut them to part time etc.) I’m not surprised that they’re just as retarded when it comes to guns. Then again, if you assume they’re not full retard, the only remaining explanation is that their real goals are other than what they say they are. Forcing businesses to drop insurance and lay off workers increases government dependence, regulating guns without doing anything to solve violence drives more impetus for gun control. Hanlon’s razor would suggest simple stupidity rather than malice, but they’re so predictably repetitive in the apparent stupidity of their answers that malice soon becomes the only option.

Ok, the president isn’t a gun owner and is stupid about the technicalities of the various sorts of guns; and? Lot’s of cock crowing about guns and ammo sizes here, no solutions whatsoever. Responsible gun owners are fast losing a seat at the table. Thank you NRA and GOOA for selling out gun owners to those who profit on guns, not those who own them.

Additionally, could we take a hiatus on laws and regulations affecting we, the people? Haven’t we endured enough? Must we continue to dump loads of regulations and new laws on the poor citizen who’s up to his neck already?

How about a moratorium, a break, a breather (thanks Thesaurus.com) from the continuous bombardment from our public ‘betters’? Is there not a week on a calendar in which we may declare Freedom From Oppression Day? Or a month? How about one GD Year!!!? And if not, why the f**k not!!?

As an artist, you know when to put the brush away. As a sculptor you know when to pack-up the chisel. But, as Americans, we won’t stop until the Mona Lisa is covered in Joker makeup and wearing a Lady Gaga Meat dress. Enough, I say!

Michael Crichton had a useful trope which he called the Gell-Mann amnesia effect (after the Nobel prize-winning physicist.) The idea was that when Gell-Mann saw a journalist or a politician talking about physics, he knew they were talking rubbish because it was in his field. But when they went on to talk about something else, he was not equipped to judge their credibility and so tended to give them the benefit of the doubt. So, when I hear Obama talking about something I do know about, and I realise he’s a vapid, shallow mountebank, I have to remind myself that he’s probably talking just as much nonsense when he’s discussing something out of my area of expertise. Taken as a whole, I therefore conclude that Obama is one of the stupidest people ever to hold the office of President. What can he possibly be talking about when he mentions bullets specifically designed to inflict maximum damage? Is this a reference to the fact that modern spitzer ogive boat-tail FMJ rounds have the centre of mass aft of the aerodynamic centre and thus yaw when they decelerate on impact, making a larger permanent wound channel? Or is he talking about expanding rounds such as HydraShoks, which are favoured because in addition to dumping more energy in the target have less likelihood of over-penetration? If so, what have pistol rounds to do with rifles? Or maybe it’s the new plastic-tipped bullets that are becoming popular. He doesn’t know, because he’s an ill-educated moron, and so stupid he doesn’t know he doesn’t know (q.v. Dunning-Kruger effect.) The point is that I can tell when he’s peddling baloney in this instance, and in every other instance when he’s spouting off about something with which I am familiar, so he’s basically all crap, all the time. It’s going to be a long four years.

Americans, I’m writing from New Zealand where we have no discernable gun culture. It’s a fantastic country to grow up in and live. Crime is petty. Our social culture has a naivity and innocence about it that deserves the envy of the world. I consider ourselves fortunate to this point to have escaped government tyranny. We have been served by leaders who have honoured individual liberties for the most part up until now. But the tide is turning in the US and every other western nation has cause to be jumpy about the potential domino effect.

I give you my full support to your right to bear arms and treat your current government’s proposals with the disdain they wholeheartedly deserve. Your country has been the most powerful nation on the planet for the past 60 years. Yet its elected leaders seek to destroy the foundations from which it drew strength to reach the summit.

We look to you to take action that reasserts the tenets of your constitution. If America falls towards totalinarianism (and it’s looking more likely by the day) the rest of the western world will take heed and blindly follow; Islam will slip in the back door opened by spiritual decay and a proud nation will soon become just like the rest, and probably worse.

The political process is not achieving what needs to happen. I shudder to think of what is required but it seems to me the conversation is now worth commencing.

There are millions of weapons that would be banned under Obama’s proposal to reinstate the 1994 law. If these weapons were actually designed and used for “assault,” we’d have daily mass killings. Of course, they are not designed for the battlefield and are not assault weapons. 99.999% of them are used for defense, target shooting and hunting.

More problematic is his proposal to regulate all private gun sales, what Barry and his followers call “closing the gun show loophole.” While universal background checks might be useful, the only way to enforce such a system would be to have all guns registered to make sure that their transfer could be checked by the government. But registration is the first step in gun confiscation – the state must know where the guns are before they can grab them. I suspect this is their real motive.

The true purpose of gun control is to advance the twin liberal objectives of growing the state and reducing individual rights.

It is both heart breaking, and enraging, to consider the events of Newtown and the other slaughters, but is it most discouraging to ponder the infantile level of debate on the remedies. Grown people must think.

It is most obvious that if President Obama’s recommendations had been carried out on his first day in office, years ago, that all of the horrors would have occurred, essentially unchanged. This is help? This is leadership?

Consider what occurred:
The killers were insane, yet,
The killers carried out preplanned lethal activities,
The killers broke a number of existing laws,
The killers ambushed innocents, knew they would face unarmed people,
First responders, the defenders getting shot at, were civilians, not the police,
All the first responders were unarmed, and most were murdered,
The armed police response took ten to twenty minutes to confront the killers,
The killers had bags of ammo, and could have carried out the butchery, with any size magazine, in any type of weapon.

The problem, a major problem, is that America has no effective management of the criminally insane. Newtown had stimulated many blogs from family members, neighbors, church people who know, today, of high level threats, who have reported this to the police, and offer the common response: the police can do nothing until he commits a crime. Obamacare is useless. No politician nurtures a constituency which cares about this orphan issue. The only people who care are the ones who attend the funerals of the victims.

The infantile solution is easy: Disarm all people, and you disarm the nuts.

But the other side of the coin is a disarmed population.

What we hear is the hot debate, on allowing two bullets, three bullets, or maybe sling shots, but zero candid discourse that it is all nonsense, no proposal will stop the slaughters. The reason people are murdered is that insane killers walk among us, and nobody cares. Are there any grown people in Washington D. C.?

I thought it was time for some good news. Our county sheriff sent the vice president a letter yesterday. As I have said many times before, there are sane and level headed people in California, regardless of what people may think. What follows is the text of the letter:

As Sheriff of Fresno County, California, I have been elected twice and have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United states and the Constitution of the State of California. I first raised my right hand and swore that oath over 33 years ago and have continuously worked as a peace officer in Fresno County ever since that day in January, 1980 upholding that oath.

In accordance with the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, I firmly believe that law abiding citizens have the right to own, possess, keep and bear firearms. I will not take firearms from these citizens and will not turn law abiding citizens into criminals by enforcing useless gun control legislation.

We must not allow the actions of a few cowards who are bent on evil to promote any laws that will infringe upon the constitutional liberties of responsible citizens who have broken no laws.

I cannot and will not stand idly by and allow unconstitutional actions to infringe upon the rights of my law abiding citizens in Fresno County.

I wonder if anyone ever asked Pres Obama what the difference is between a Ruger Mini 14 ranch rifle and an AR 15. I doubt he would have any idea. They shoot the same round and their receivers are made differently, but their function is the same. Ranch rifle vs “Assault rifle.” To me a baseball bat can be an assault weapon. Its basically an adjective. I guess politicians, congress men and non gun owners fear scary appearences and scary sounding words (assault).

The difference between a beautifully designed and machined semi-automatic rifle and an “assault rifle” is that the later has a mean sounding name and it looks threatening. By analogy, take an actor as handsome as Cary Grant was during his prime years in Hollywood, apply an ugly looking silicone mask, some fake blood make-up, and have him wear platform boots and he is made to look like Frankenstein.

Under the hood, so to speak, both rifles are the same. Because of this fundamental reality, it is extremely difficult to draft any sort of meaningful legislation which would ban one rifle, but not the other.

Should we ban all doctors because some of them perform abortions?
Perhaps stop having presidents because some of them are dangerous idiots trying to kill our constitution. Have a good laugh at the antics that will follow an effort to ban guns. Let’s all watch a good western movie.